Evaluation of Foundation Portfolio

1. Evaluation of Foundation Portfolio By Lewis Hartley 8158

2. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

3. We have attempted to develop the forms and conventions of radio broadcasting, we’ve done this because we don’t want to confuse our prospective audience. Our group have done this by having a carefully structured news report which follows the headlines, expanding on the headlines, sport, weather and traffic. We have also challenged the conventions of radio jingles. This has provided the audience with something new and different and makes our station stand out from the masses.

4. How does your media product represent different social groups?

5. We have tried to be as unbiased as possible in our news reports. This was to create a realism normally seen in news reports. In hindsight however I feel we may have approached the news from the perspective of a teenager, in terms of the type of stories we choose.

6. What Kind of Media institution might distribute your product?

7. We would expect our product to be distributed on analogue radio and this would be broadcast to people in the Calder valley. We would also broadcast our radio station on the web so that people could listen to it in more places. This would show that our station was modern and easy to use.

8. Who would be the audience for your Media Product?

9. Our audience is potentially everybody in Calderdale 200,100 people. However we cater more for the younger market with our mix of music and chat. I would suggest that our demographic was probably 16-24 year olds in this area. We would also expect these people to have an active interest in music and the news which surrounds it.

10. How did you attract/address your audience?

11. During the first few weeks of the task we took an audience survey to establish what people think is good and bad about radio broadcasts. This gave use an idea of what we should be aiming to accomplish. We tried to fulfil all the things people asked for but we couldn’t fit them all in because they weren’t all appropriate for the task. Our station name Moor Music FM would attract audiences because moor and more are homophones and Calderdale has lots of moors. Our jingle is unusual and this will draw the readers attention and hopefully encourage more people to listen to our station. None of the people we used for our broadcast had broad regional accents however they did have slight accents. We have also attracted our audience by using local news in our broadcasts.

12. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

13. I have learnt a lot about the different technologies used in radio production. There are many types of software that I had never even heard of before, for instance Zara automation software which allowed sound fx to be automatically loaded during broadcasts. I also discovered Premier Pro which was incredibly useful when we were adjusting our broadcast by adding pauses and beds. We also discovered blogging when we used Edublogs to showcase our work.

14. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

15. I believe we have learnt to make our broadcasts more professional by using certain techniques. I think that our microphone technique was poor when we did our preliminary task. We often found ourselves too far away or too close to the microphone and this compromised the quality of the sound. We also learnt to perfect segues which helped the radio broadcast to flow better. This was done by listening to radio broadcasts done by the professionals and gleaming tips of them. I think these are the main things we have learnt from our preliminary task.